The service economy has grown substantially in recent years. In the long distance telephone market, for example, over two hundred million (200 million) long distance calls are placed, on average, each day in the United States alone. For many such service-based businesses, fixed costs are high and variable costs are low, resulting in high profit margins for incremental customers (each additional customer after a threshold number of customers that are required to pay for fixed cost). Thus, it is clear why long distance carriers and other service providers are so aggressive in their pursuit of new accounts.
In the long distance telephone market, for example, the incremental profits achieved from completing each additional call in excess of a threshold number of calls has been estimated to be as high as ninety eight percent (98%). Accordingly, service providers are constantly searching for new techniques and promotions to acquire new accounts. For example, as an added incentive to open or maintain an account, many long distance carriers offer reward programs, such as the True Rewards™ program offered by AT&T, that provide subscribers with discounts and free gifts. In addition, many long distance carriers offer additional incentives to encourage a potential new customer to switch long distance carriers. For example, many long distance companies will mail a check to a potential customer to encourage that customer to switch his or her long distance carrier. If a potential customer cashes the check, the endorsement on the check also serves as an authorization to change the customer's long distance provider.
Many service providers attempt to lure new customers with various direct marketing promotions. Service providers, such as long distance carriers and credit card issuers, initially identify potential customers and then typically send many different mail solicitations to each targeted customer. During 1996 alone, credit card companies mailed out more than two billion unsolicited offers for new credit cards to U.S. households, in addition to placing tens of millions of telemarketing phone calls, in an attempt to acquire cardholders.
While a number of service providers have been successful in obtaining valuable new customers with such direct marketing approaches, it has been found that the vast majority of customers ignore such promotions in view of the overwhelming number of promotions received and the failure of service providers to differentiate their service products and various direct marketing promotions. In fact, a direct-mail campaign is often deemed a success in the industry if the campaign achieves a “response rate” of just three percent (3%) In other words, a direct-mail marketing campaign may be a success even when ninety-seven percent (97%) of mail pieces are inefficiently and wastefully discarded by recipients. Thus, in order to reach valuable new customers, service providers constantly search for more efficient and effective ways to acquire new customers.
The problems and costs associated with current methods for acquiring new customers, however, are not limited to service providers. Even from the customer's point of view, conventional service provider acquisition techniques are unsatisfactory. Many customers are confused, discouraged and annoyed by the repeated attempts of service providers to solicit the customer's business through direct marketing efforts. Specifically, customers would benefit if they received an incentive to switch to a new service provider at a time when the customer was more likely to switch. In fact, if the incentives associated with acquiring new customers were properly offered, customers would be more likely to accept such offers.
The billing statements of various businesses have been used as a mechanism to advertise to account holders. Many merchants pay one or more billing statement issuers for the ability to promote goods and services in promotional materials that are sent with billing statements. For example, NewSub Services, Inc., of Stamford, Conn., is a merchant that has advertised magazine subscriptions through attachments to billing statements. In this manner, an account holder's billing statement can serve as a medium for advertising to that account holder. Since the customer must theoretically open the billing statement to pay the amount due, the likelihood that the customer will see the advertising message is greatly increased compared to traditional direct mail promotions. In addition, the parent application to the present application discloses an automated system that uses predetermined criteria to print an offer for one or more products to an account holder on a billing statement, and to allow the account holder to purchase those offered products using the billing statement.
Billing-dependent businesses are also concerned with the inability to collect full payment owed by account holders. Such uncollected payments, also called “uncollectable debts”, are considered a cost of doing business and consequently decrease the profits of the billing-dependent businesses. Therefore, a reduction in uncollectable debt would be advantageous.
As apparent from the above deficiencies with conventional customer acquisition methods, a need exists for a method and system that allows a service provider to more efficiently and effectively acquire new customers. Yet another need exists for a system that allows a billing-dependent business to minimize their amount of uncollectable debt.